Ethan sat in silence within a room carved from shimmering obsidian and laced with gentle pulses of psychic energy. The walls hummed softly, not with malice, but with a resonance akin to breath—alive, ancient, aware. He was bare-chested, clothed only in fitted black trousers and rugged boots. The air was still, the silence absolute, save for the subtle thrum of the Will Plane beyond.
This place had been gifted to him by Queen Ashtora—a residence woven from the essence of the Obsidian Groves, refashioned here in the Ancestral Home of the E'Sherils after the Grove itself had been rendered uninhabitable. It had been only a week since the battle—seven hours in his original world. Yet within that brief blink of time, worlds had shifted.
